Maria Smorzhevskikh-Smirnova, the director of the Narva Museum in Estonia, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in absentia on charges related to hanging banners that label Russian president Vladimir Putin a “war criminal.”
One banner fuses Putin’s face with that of Adolf Hitler, with text on top reading “Putler” and “war criminal” below. Another features a mug shot of Putin covered in blood.
Citing the exiled news outlet Mediazona, a report in the Moscow Times says the sentencing by the Russian court followed charges of disseminating “war fakes” and “rehabilitating Nazism.”
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Smorzhevskikh-Smirnova has allegedly hung banners since 2023 on a wall of Narva Castle on Russian Victory Day, which commemorates the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. According to a report by ERR News, part of the Estonian Public Broadcasting Company, Russian authorities have set up screens in Ivangorod, a Russian town across a river that marks the border between Russia and the northeast of Estonia, to project images of Victory Day parades toward Narva, most of whose inhabitants speak Russian.
After learning of the sentencing, according to ERR News, Smorzhevskikh-Smirnova said, “I have not committed a single illegal act in my life. How my actions are interpreted by the totalitarian regime of a neighboring country is their internal matter. I see what has happened as yet another, rather banal and long-since unoriginal attempt to intimidate me personally, and also others—those who dare to call things by their proper names.”
She continued: “My response is simple and unequivocal: it will not succeed. The ‘Russian warship’ may continue on its course, one that has already been clearly defined by the defenders of Ukraine.”
Earlier this year, after she was named on the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs’ wanted list, Smorzhevskikh-Smirnova called the designation “a great honor.”